Boy, it is getting deep out there!

Carolyn

All my plants are bundled into the tropical house, so I don't have to try to heat the citrus house during minus temperatures.


Somewhere here is our pond, and the valiant pink flamingo!


5 ft icicles on the citrus house!

I can still get to the greenhouse down the path I shoveled...

Yeah, I used to live in the Cariboo region of Central BC, and once it got above freezing, we were all running around in t-shirts!
Of course, my attempts at growing tropicals up there sucked...

The newspaper announced today that our nighttime lows for this week will be in the negative numbers.  To be on the safe side, I have moved all my citrus trees into the tropical house.  Very tight fit, but I fear the electric booster heater in the citrus house won't be able to keep up.  The tropical house should stay nice and warm!

Happy New Year, and I hope all you folks down south survive this winter in fine form!

Carolyn

Aaron,
Thanks for the post about the books at ECHO - my sweet hubby got me a copy of "100 Tropical Fruits, Nuts and Spices. . ."  for Christmas!!!

Carolyn

Rats!  Yep, it's a female!
So, my choices are - keep this one and also squeeze a male into my greenhouse, or get rid of this one and get a hermaphrodite?
I already have way too many marula and safou, since I am hanging onto all of them until they bloom so I can sort out the males from the females.

For Christmas, I would like a "home plant-sex-identification kit"!  Can someone please invent one???

Carolyn

When I brought my seeds back from Hawaii, I just broke open the pod, sucked the mucilage off the seeds, and dropped them into ziplock bags with some SoilMoist granules. They were sprouting by the time we got home, but I planted them right away and they all came up. 

I have about a dozen trees in my greenhouse.  Some are pushing 8 ft tall and I am hoping for fruit next year.  They taste really good (you boil them first), very creamy like avocado, but they have a sort of weird tanginess/bitterness to them.
I have been afraid to get rid of any of my trees until they start to fruit.  My daughter-in-law had reported that some trees never bear fruit, so I was worried about them being dioecious.
My greenhouse occasionally gets down to 50 in cold snaps and they have done fine.
I do have a bit of an issue with inter veinal chlorosis with some of my specimens.  I have been feeding them more, but I really can't figure out what they need, so I just keep stumbling around in the dark, hoping to hit on the right nutrient combination.
I grew mine from seeds I got from Forest House Cameroon.  Most of them sprouted en route, so I just potted them up and let them go at it.

Carolyn

Brrr. . . supposed to get down to -2 here tonight. Sacrificed light in the greenhouse to get enough amps to run the electric space heater in the citrus house.  Tropical house did ok last night when it dropped to 5.
First test of my 30,000 BTU furnace, which replaced the 20,000 BTU one.  So far, so good.  We'll see if the low-temperature alarm goes off tonight!

How's it going down Hill Country way, Mark? Hope all your plants do well during the cold snap!

We are bracing for a bit of low temps here in Idaho also.  Should be in the low single digits for the next few nights, and not above freezing during the day until close to Christmas.  Yikes!

Got my "door cozy" up in front of the greenhouse, put fresh batteries in my temperature station and tested its low-temp alarm system (wish it was louder...) and plugged in the backup electric heaters, so I think we are good to go!

Carolyn

I have mealy bugs.  Yuck! The good thing is that, with the exception of a few spider mites here and there, they are my ONLY pest.
My trees are too big to drown (50 or so 5-10 ft trees in pots), and are in my greenhouse with about a dozen tropical birds loose in there, so this has been a big issue for me.  I did not have much luck with neem oil, and in the winter when I can't ventilate, the smell would get really bad.  I use Bayer systemic (imidicloprid), but I really can't see much progress. I keep with it though, just in case.
My latest tactic has been 50% rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle, mixed with the appropriate amount (about 1 tsp per pint) pyrethrin.  The rubbing alcohol gives a fast kill and the pyrethrin holds them back for a while.  The smell isn't too bad and it dissipates very quickly, unlike the neem oil. It seems to work really well and the plants don't mind it at all.
With the birds out there, I can't use anything stronger than pyrethrin or neem, and even with that, I can't just start spraying at random.  I go tree-by-tree.  I go leaf-by-leaf in the case of my kukui, which are always the hardest hit.
The big thing for me is that I just have to keep on it, and never let my guard down.  I have a fanciful vision of the future where I have actually eliminated all the squishy white critters!
They are expensive, but this spring I am going to order some mealy bug destroyers (Cryptolaemus Montrouzieri).  Hopefully they can do the trick. I would like to raise my own beetles and keep them on hand when I need them, so I am doing a bit of research into what else I can feed them if I am lucky enough to run out of mealy bugs!

Carolyn

... Unless you count the sulcata tortoise who owns the yard. I'll probably be lurking & learning mostly but thought I should at least introduce myself.

Hi Kelly!  I have been thinking about getting some sort of reptile, such as a tortoise, for my greenhouse, but I worry that it will eat everything in sight.  What does your tortoise eat, and do you have to fence off your plants?

Thanks!
Carolyn

Weird.  Do they fly?  They look like white flies, until I magnify the image.  Then they don't.  But they don't look like mealy bugs either.  Whatever they are, I'd kill them quick!